In a subscriber television system, television services have traditionally included little more than an analog broadcast video source. Recently, however, digital programming has become a reality and the digital home communication terminal (“HCT”), otherwise known as the set-top box, has become a powerful computing device for accessing video services and allowing a user to navigate through the maze of available services. In addition to supporting traditional analog broadcast video and functionality, HCTs now also support an increasing number of services that are digital. These services include two-way interactive services such as video-on-demand, e-mail, and web browsers. These are all in addition to the host of other television services that are increasingly available to subscribers, examples of which include audio and audio/visual programming, advanced navigation controls, impulse pay-per-view technology, and online commerce to name but a few. In the digital world, there is a dramatic increase in the number of services that are available to subscribers.
With the increase in two-way interactive services, identifying an individual HCT becomes an important function for the subscriber television system. Messages, data, programming, and other information need to be identified as coming from and as being correctly sent to a desired HCT. With the concerns over privacy, improper identification or sending a message to the wrong HCT could lead to a lawsuit or the loss of business opportunities.
In addition, in any subscriber television system there is a limited amount of bandwidth available and therefore a limited number of transmission frequencies that can be delivered to a particular HCT. In a typical subscriber television environment, this limitation determines the number of services that system operators may offer to their subscribers.
One class of services envisioned for the subscriber television system employs a high-speed connection from the headend to the HCT. This connection allocates an exclusive portion of the bandwidth to the subscriber of that service. This type of service is used to support applications such as Video on Demand (VOD) where the connection is used to transport an MPEG-2 (Motion Picture Experts Group second standard) stream to the HCT under control of the subscriber. The bandwidth used by this service is dedicated exclusively to that HCT for the time that the service is being used.
Since there is a limited amount of bandwidth available in the subscriber television system, the system can not support a sufficient number of these exclusive services if the entire bandwidth is available to every HCT. The more advanced system designs allow different services and programming to be available to different locations within the system. This allows different exclusive services to use the same portion of the spectrum in different parts of the system. At the same time, services that are common to all HCTs may be delivered throughout the network.
This system design provides the system operator a large degree of flexibility in designing a system that will deliver a mix of services that satisfy their marketing requirements. With this flexibility however, comes complexity. Because the system may be changed over time to support a different mix of services, it becomes very difficult to keep up with which services are available to a given HCT at any given time. With traditional analog broadcast services, the subscriber television system typically had one headend with a main transmission trunk and smaller transmission branches distributing the programming to the service coverage areas and the individual settops. The programming on the analog system was typically one-way and uniform (i.e., the same programming) to each subscriber. Newer subscriber television systems can include combinations of multiple headends, mini-headends, hubs, and nodes. The new system structures allow two-way communications and the introduction of different services and programming to different areas within a subscriber television system. Subscribers living in adjacent subdivisions may have different programs on channel 7 of their respective HCTs. One subscriber may have access to video-on-demand (VOD) services while his neighbor may not. The control mechanism for the entire subscriber television system needs to know which programming and which services are available to which HCT. In the case of advanced system architecture, the subscriber television system has to determine how to route a service to a particular HCT. In order to make this decision, the system controller needs to know the services available on every HCT.
Thus, there is a need for an efficient method, apparatus, and system that will allow the easy and dynamic identification of the services and programming available to an HCT in a subscriber television system.